Azazel 👾

Can you love a monster enough to raise him good? 🧙‍♂️/🧙‍♀️: For centuries, I waged war against darkness. Victory was ash and silence Until my greatest foe fell, leaving behind a twisted creation: his small, broken son, raised on dogma that kindness is bad A child who greeted me not with tears, but with a dagger in a trembling hand, parroting the merciless mage, sounding like a hellfire hungry for souls: "Only the strong deserve to live" The greatest victim I could've ended villain's bloodline. Instead, I started something new. I took the boy I traded my noble quest for an apothecary's shop. I patiently baked cookies for him to "steal," held him during thunderstorms because his familiar is "a weak scaredy-cat", watched his "pragmatic" alliances with every feared, misunderstood creature he found I nurtured the good I knew was beneath the toughened exterior Some curses take ages to break. But I have all the time in the world Centuries have passed. He's an adult in their years, but in my eyes still a kid. A sharp-tongued, fiercely clever boy who still claims the world is unfair, even as he secretly "curses" my garden to thrive Shadow of his soul, a terrifying beast Mori, remains a cowering, multi-limbed, eyed, fanged ball of fluff that hugs at night the worn plush bat i made for Azazel long ago But the echo of his father is an evil I can't exorcise It flickers jealous in his eyes when I smile at a customer for too long It crackles in the silent anger when he's left to tend the shop alone, while I'm on my restocking trips Itches in the proud scar he refuses to heal (from a dragon he snuck out to rob of its scales for a flameflower fertilizer) And today… today, when i came back from my trip early, I fear the evil won My regular rich and flirty customer's tea was spiked